


ahead of the curve

by pigeonsarecool



Category: Richard III - Shakespeare
Genre: Frankenstein's Monster AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 12:19:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7892071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pigeonsarecool/pseuds/pigeonsarecool
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He names it Richard, after the Lionheart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ahead of the curve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ICryYouMercy (TrafalgarsLaw)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrafalgarsLaw/gifts).



> For icryyoumercy! The prompt was "Frankenstein's monster AU, set at some point during Richard III." I sort of, uh, ran with it. Think of it as a prologue.

PART ONE. THE MAKER

  
He names it Richard, after the Lionheart. Its eyes are the eyes of a hawk, and they blink up at him, beady and grotesque and somehow _hateful_. Its hands are the hands of a killer. Its heart is nothing so poetic; it is only a heart, a lump of manufactured flesh, blood and sinew, shaped not by the hands of God but by the hands of man.

One man.

Henry Stafford, named after nothing so poetic as Richard the Lionheart, leans back to examine his finished product. Five-and-twenty years he has lived, now, six of them dedicated almost entirely to this—a masterwork of true creation in this age, as he once heard Edward say, of discoveries. This, the perfect king. The true king.

The construction of the body was simple enough; an organ there, a vein here, an intestine, a limb, skin, fingers—any man with Henry’s upbringing (the very best of tutors, the very best of teaching, unlimited access to the king’s library) should not struggle overmuch with such a task. It was only a matter of understanding the human body, of having the courage, the vision, the ambition to destroy God’s work and replace it with your own. Henry, as it turns out, has that vision.

The problem, then, is not the body. The problem has more to do with—the soul.

Stafford does not believe in souls, as such, but for the purposes of this endeavor he fears he may have to. He has a body, a human body, full-size, fully built and functional, in theory at least; what he does not have is a person willing to inhabit this body. That is, there are legs, legs capable of walking, but no reason why they should walk; a mouth, capable of speaking, but nothing to say, no force with which to make the lips move. A heart, but a heart that simply refuses to beat. What explanation can there be, besides the lack of a soul? What causes a dead man to die and a living man to live? What force, what mystery, what strange unknown undercurrents of the universe are responsible for the endowment of a lifeless thing with bright, sparking, human mind, with movement? With the will to move?

That night, a villager’s cow was struck, unexpectedly, by a bolt of lightning. Stafford, examining the animal’s remains after the storm had passed, came to a sudden realization: a living thing had been killed, brutally, by a force—the composition of which remained, as yet, mysterious to mankind. The villager did not know what had caused the death of his cow; all he knew was that something had come out of the sky during a flash of Nature’s rage and afterwards the cow was dead. Why, then, could that same force not create life as well as end it? Could this unknown thing of the sky be harnessed to work in favor of man, of living things?

Which is why, as of two fortnights ago, the project has been stalled, and Stafford has been watching the stars.

Tonight, the cloudy kind of night all the books say means good things (for Stafford, at least), he drags the body out into the palace courtyard, in the shadow of a large tree and out of the sight of anyone who may be watching from a terrace or tower window. He positions the body, props it against the tree at an angle that his calculations have told him is the most advantageous trajectory; ties its limbs to branches, lest a strong wind or rain dislodge it before the lightning strikes.

All that is left to do, for Stafford, before half a lifetime’s work is brought to an end and the next, most rewarding phase of the project can commence, is sit a safe distance away and wait.

 

 

PART TWO. THE MONSTER

  
One thing about being a monster is that, well, one gets used to being _watched_.

It’s just a hunch, at first—after he wakes, that first time, in a frenzy of lightning and terror, lashed to a tree and barely able to stand unaided—he casts his eyes across the courtyard and sees nothing. The place is empty but for himself and the storm. Nevertheless, there’s a strange, prickling feeling at the back of his neck, the kind humans get, and his suspicions are confirmed, rather clumsily, when his vision goes black and the next thing he knows he’s staring up into the eyes of a man named Henry Stafford.

He is four hours old, then. His hands are fifty-eight years. He does not yet know what a monster is, or why they are made. Stafford tells him his name is Richard.

From there on, Richard comes to know that there is no such thing as being alone, not for a man like him. His every movement is being carefully monitored, his every word painstakingly stored away for future reference; his progress is being charted, he knows, somewhere deep in the bowels of the palace, where Henry (it’s a while, though, before Richard starts to think of him as Henry and not as father) works. Sometimes he wonders if there will be another Richard in the future, if he does not succeed, and the thought fuels him to be better, to know better, to speak better. Henry is watching him, he knows, wherever he is, and ignores the chills that go down his spine at the idea of it, the awareness that haunts him. He’s grateful.

He doesn’t know when the idea of hurting Henry first comes to him. Somewhere between Henry (the other Henry; weak, gentle Henry, nothing like his Henry) and Lady Anne—maybe it was the power he held over her, the intoxicating feeling of being able to create or to destroy with words alone; maybe it was that she reminded him of—

Well.

It isn’t a plan, exactly. It’s an idea, a whole idea, devised by Richard, for himself alone, and Henry doesn’t know about it. It’s an idea that ferments in the back of his mind for weeks, months after the encounter with Anne, curling its tendrils around his manmade heart as if to remind him: Henry created you to do what he could not do himself. You are the superior being, and there is a chance, here, of becoming free.

 


End file.
